The State in/of Borderlands History
University of Texas at El Paso
El Paso, Texas
November 6-7, 2015
Keynote Speaker: Kelly Lytle Hernandez (UCLA), author of Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol
The Department of History at the University of Texas at El Paso announces the conference, “The State in/of Borderlands History,” to be held November 6-7, 2015. Although the state has been a defining and an often ominous presence in the history of the Mexico-U.S. Borderlands, the systematic and explicit study of the state has been rare in Borderlands historiography. While historians of the U.S. have recently devoted increased attention to the state, already a well-established focus of Mexicanists, social and cultural history has largely shaped the field of Borderlands history. Current scholarship on transnationalism and the history of empire has also challenged the “natural” character of the nation-state.
Yet, beginning in the colonial period, and in fact before, a variety of state structures have shaped human existence in the region. Those living in and traveling through the borderlands have encountered and engaged with the state through forced labor in armies, mines and missions, the collection of taxes, and military action as well as immigration control, border policing, education and public health regimes. In these and other arenas, state structures–national, local, indigenous, and/or transnational–have made themselves present in borderlanders’ lives and, in turn, been challenged and shaped by them. Borderlands, geographical and conceptual, can serve as a critical location for a new approach to understanding state formation and state power.